JEWEL BOXES: The luminous, mesmerizing world of glass artist Dale Chihuly

I want people to be overwhelmed with light and color in a way they have never experienced.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/author/28595-Dale_Chihuly

I want people to be overwhelmed with light and color in a way they have never experienced.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/author/28595-Dale_Chihuly

"I want people to be overwhelmed by light and color

in a way they have never experienced."

                                                                             ... Dale Chihuly

 Glass forest by Dale Chihuly (2003)
All photographs by Michael Schonbach

Mesmerizing ... zany ... color-saturated ... puzzling ... elegant ... exotic ... These and many other adjectives have been used in an attempt to describe the extraordinary qualities of glass artist Dale Chihuly's dazzling artwork. My recent visit to downtown Seattle's Chihuly Garden and Glass confirmed that this 74-year-old Tacoma, WA native's talents are not only singular, but immensely entertaining to boot. Chihuly Garden and Glass, a long-term exhibition, opened in 2012 at the Seattle Center and quickly has become a destination crowd-pleaser.

Chihuly was introduced to glassmaking as an interior design student at the University of Washington. In 1965, he enrolled in the first glass program in the country, at the University of Wisconsin; he continued his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he later established and taught for more than a decade in the school's the glass program. 

 Mille Fiore (A Thousand Flowers)

In 1968, Chihuly received a Fulbright Fellowship, and went to work at the Venini glass factory in Venice. There he observed the team approach to blowing glass, 

which is essential to the way he works today. 

 

Ikebana and float boats (c.1995)

This installation, a wooden boat filled with glass orbs,

was inspired by Chihuly's childhood memories of seeing Japanese 

fishing boat floats along Puget Sound's beaches, as well as

the Japanese art of Ikebana (precise, formal flower arranging).

In 1971, Chihuly cofounded Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State; with this educational center, he led the avant-garde in the development of glass as a fine art. His work is included in more than 200 museum collections worldwide, including at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, over the canals and piazzas of Venice (sculptures for this project were crafted at glass factories in Finland, Ireland, and Mexico), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the V & A Museum in London, Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew), and The Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem. 

Left and below: Luminous, exuberant chandeliers by Chihuly. The artist has a longtime interest in the way art and architecture interact. In his 1995-1996 project Chihuly over Venice, he pushed the envelope on scale and placement, creating thirteen chandeliers to be hung in different sites throughout the city. Five of these installations from, or inspired by, Chihuly over Venice are included in the Seattle Center exhibition.

Below: Sealife Tower

 

The artist's love of the sea always shines through his work. This powerful 15-foot structure -- which includes forms such as starfish, octopus, conch shells, sea anemones, 

urchins and manta rays -- was inspired by the ocean and specifically by 

Puget Sound. The Towers evolved from Chihuly's desire to exhibit sculpture 

in spaces where ceilings could not withstand the weight of chandeliers. 

°     °     °     °     ° 

Persian Ceiling 
This spectacular installation is lit from above and rests on a clear glass pane. 
It's part of the artist's Persians series (begun in 1986), a bold experiment in form and color incorporated into an architectural framework. Smaller shapes nestle inside 
larger ones, and the entire work can be seen either as one seamless piece, 
or as a collection of distinct design elements.  

Below:

Perhaps one of my favorite of Michael's photos from our visit on 7/2/16:

a hanging flower sculpture in the  shadow of the Space Needle

This orange and yellow suspended sculpture seems

to stretch forever inside the glass house that leads out to the garden.

It is 100 feet long and contains 1,340 individual pieces.

Chihuly has said that memories of his mother's abundant gardens 

serve as constant inspiration to his work. His lifelong fascination for glasshouses has
grown into a series of exhibitions within botanical settings. 

°     °     °     °     °     °     °

Below: I modestly call this extravaganza of purple glass and greenery
Judy's Magical Garden. 

Chihuly's Garden Cycle began in 2001 at the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago. 

Other major exhibition venues for this cycle include the de Young Museum in 

San Francisco (2008); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2011); 

and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2013).  

I'm an artist, a designer, a craftsman, interior designer, half-architect. There's no one name that fits me very well.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/author/28595-Dale_Chihuly

For more information about Dale Chihuly's life, philosophy and politics

please visit the link below.

Chihuly the Artist: Breathing life into the Glass 

°     °     °      °     °     °      °     °     °

originally posted 7.10.16

ODD BITS: John Margolies' quirky photos of roadside Americana: "Exclamation points of the landscape"

I wanted to note the passing of John Margolies, America's foremost photographer of vernacular architecture, on May 26, 2016, at 76. He specialized in shooting quirky, playful subjects: incomprehensible neon signage, miniature golf courses, motels shaped like everything from wigwams to railroad cars, ice cream stands shaped like (of course) ice cream cones, and architectural mixed metaphors such as a gas station in the form of a teapot or flying saucer. 

Below: Teapot Dome Service station, Zillah, Washington 

Built in 1922, in business for 80 years

Restored by the community and now in use as a visitors' center

As a child, I was enchanted by these totems of the highway, and I recall my Uncle Arnold once "giving" me a giant milk bottle that marked a dairy farm in upstate NY. (Later, he gave me all the giant milk bottles in the US, but by that time I was a bit suspicious about the whole caper.)

 

 One of "my" milk bottles, this one at the
Frates Milk Bottle Building in New Bedford, MA

In a remembrance of Mr. Margolies, the NY Times wrote, "Starting in the 1970s, he spent much of his life scouring back roads for those vanishing emblems of midcentury enterprise, which were already imperiled by air travel, interstates and big-box sprawl. Over more than 30 years and 100,000 miles Mr. Margolies produced tens of thousands of images, resulting in a spate of richly illustrated books, including John Margolies: Roadside America (2010), with text by design writer Phil Patton and the architectural historian C. Ford Peatross."

This book cover features Margolies' iconic photo of the

Big Fish Drive-in Supper Club, Bena, Minn

Below: 

Home Away from Home: Motels in America

Nov. 1995

                                                                               Above: Fun Along the Road: American                                       Tourist Attractions - Another Amazing Album from America's 
                                                                                Number One Roadside Observer

Above: Martin Theater, Talladega, Alabama, 1980
This photo became the cover for Margolies' book 
Ticket to Paradise: American Movie Theaters and How We Had Fun

Margolies lectured widely and his photographs were exhibited around the world, including at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers; the Building Centre in London; the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.; and, last year, at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. Below are a few more photos for your viewing pleasure.

Flying Saucer Gas Station, Ashtabula, Ohio

 The Donut Hole

Doughnut shop in La Puente, Calif.

 

Twistee Treat soft ice cream stand

[Location unknown] 

Writing in The New York Times in 1981, famed architecture critic Paul Goldberger said, “The architectural historian John Margolies must surely be the father of this entire movement — he has led dozens of his colleagues toward an appreciation of those buildings that might be called exclamation points of the landscape.”

Much of Margolies' huge collection of ephemera of the road (menus, postcards, matchbooks, placemats) is now housed at the Library of Congress 

along with 13,000 of his images. 

For a day-glo lunch, stop in at 

 Uranium Cafe, Grants, N.M., 1979. 

John Margolies/courtesy Taschen Books

! ! ! ! ! !

EXHIBITIONS: "Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia" at Michigan's Cranbrook Art Museum now, coming to Berkeley in Feb.

Roll up for the mystery tour ...

Jimi Hendrix, 1968, photo by Ira Cohen

All photo credits to the Cranbrook Art Museum, with thanks

For those who are too young to have experienced the freewheeling and hyperpolitical 1960s, or for those who did, but can't remember anything ("If you can remember the 60s, you weren't really there"), Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia provides an illuminating window into that singular era. Currently running at the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, MI (in metro Detroit) and moving to UC Berkeley in February, the exhibition -- which curators say is "loosely organized around Timothy Leary’s famous mantra, 'Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out,' ” -- examines the art, architecture, and design of the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. 

“Everyone at that moment expected that life in the very near future would be different and better,” said Andrew Blauvelt, new director of Cranbrook Art Museum. “Immersive experiences offered a taste or glimpse of that life. Installations were filled with new media like slide projectors, films, video, light, sound, but also wind, scents, elements of nature.”

Below:

Clark Richert, view of Drop City "The Complex",

in El Morro, outside Trinidad, CO, 
 c. 1966

Drop City was a countercultural artists' community in Colorado
inspired by the architectural ideas of Buckminster Fuller and Steve Baer. 
As word about it spread, people came from all over the world to
participate in its experiments with structure, function, environmentalism 
 and communal living. Residents constructed domes and zonohedra 
 (crystal-like shapes ) for shelter, using geometric panels made 
from car roofs and other found materials.

 

Hippie Modernism focuses on the centrality of design during the ascendancy of hippiedom. It showcases furniture and architecture created to suit the countercultural lifestyle, psychedelic photographs and graphics demonstrating the influence of consciousness-altering drugs, and avant garde films and magazines that both propagandized and informed. Video and music are all utilized in the show with intelligence and good humor.

 Superonda Sofa,
Archizoom Associati, 1966 

 The Superonda was a whimsical, modular piece of furniture
whose undulating form could be configured in several different ways.
According to its designer Andrea Branzi, it was "either a chaise longue, sofa or divan. 
It is a highly interactive design, functioning more as a plaything than as 
a serious seating solution." I wonder how much pot was smoked on these things!

Women in Design: The Next Decade

 Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, 1975

It may be hard to believe now, but there was plenty of misogyny and

sexism within the "progressive" politics of the 60s and early 1970s. ("The only position for women in the movement is prone" was an infamous statement made in 1964 by Stokely Carmichael, on the role of women in the civil rights movement.) This poster would probably

have been considered fairly radical in its time. 

Below:

Environment Transformer/Flyhead Helmet, 1968

 Haus-Rucker-Co

This attention-grabbing machine/hat was

intended to be "a mind-expansion device, meant to completely 

 change your relationship to your environment—your personal, physical, 

and social world. What’s not to love?" say the designers.

 

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia 

will be showing at the  

• Cranbrook Art Museum, June 19–October 9, 2016, and at the 

• University of CA, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 

February 8–May 21, 2017. 

~oOo~

EXHIBITIONS: "Isaac Mizrahi: An Unruly History" brings riotous color and joie de vivre to NYC's Jewish Museum

In its last week at the Jewish Museum in NYC -- catch it if you can! Ends August 7.

 
Portrait of the artist as an ever-young man, 2015

Through his unique combination of charm, inventiveness, pizzazz and entrepreneurial 

savvy, prolific designer Isaac Mizrahi has earned a special place in the hearts 

of fashionistas all over the world. An exciting exhibition of his clothing, 
hats, jewelry, shoes, accessories, as well as costumes for theater, opera, 

and dance opened on March 18 at the Jewish Museum in New York. 

Mizrahi was born in Brooklyn in 1961, to observant Jewish parents who had 
emigrated from Syria. His father gave him his first sewing machine
when he was 10 years old.  

 Orange Orange jumpsuit, 1988
Mizrahi was still an unknown when his first-ever runway show
in 1988 received rave reviews from the fashion press.

At that time, the NY Times wrote:
"Remember the name Isaac Mizrahi. He is this year's hottest new 
designer. His first and only fashion show, in April, was so professionally 
executed, so tasteful and imaginative, that it catapulted him into the big time."

 °     °     °     °     °     °     °     °

A color extravaganza at the Mizrahi exhibition

 Elevator pad gown, 2005

Grosgrain-ribbon bodice, quilted silk and lamb’s-wool skirt;

inspired by the "workhorse elevator padding used by movers."

(Sketch, above, and fabric design, below)

 All photos courtesy of the Jewish Museum, NYC, unless otherwise noted

 °     °     °     °     °     °     °     °

"Isaac Mizrahi’s inventive and provocative style brings complex issues into the arena of fashion, igniting a spirited discourse about high versus low, modern glamour, and contemporary culture. His runway shows were cast with unconventionally beautiful models of all ethnicities, dressed in Star of David belts, Western wear infused handmade lace, Adidas sneakers in place of high heels, handbags worn as hats, or a humble cotton undershirt paired with a floor-length taffeta skirt."

... curatorial note 

Blossom Blazers, double-silk jackets with ruffle collar, silk crepe pants, 1991. 

“I tried to take the silliest things, like ruffles, and toughen them up,” Mizrahi says. 

Evening dress or blazer? You decide. 

 °     °     °     °     °     °     °     °

Uniting opposites -- casual and formal, playful and elegant, couture and 
off-the-rack --  is a Mizrahi signature.
 

Sketch for Hologram Leaves Dress, 2008

Inspired by ... “Kitchen towels. O.K.? 

Where they’re printed with fruit and leaves in the fall? ... 

Those prints made me super super happy when I was a kid. 

I don’t know why.”

 °     °     °     °     °     °     °     ° 
 Below are a couple of photos from Mad for Mod's
stylish NYC correspondent, Murphy Birdsall.


Above: Poppy dress and elegant outerwear w/floaty skirt

"I was really interested in the background outfit with the down-filled evening jacket. 
That’s my kind of thing -- I always fear being cold when I get dressed up."... MB

Below: One of Murphy's favorites, "Duckie"
"I like Duckie because it looks like something a child (or childish adult) would 
put together for a show in the living room."  ... MB

Mizrahi's propensity for zany showmanship is evident in his many
theatrical costume designs. "Duckie", made of cotton and tulle, was created for
a production of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf that was held in Central Park in 2013.
Acording to Mizrahi, Duckie is "an NPR-listening, PBS-watching,
school-teachery kind of duck."

To see a video of the designer in action as a director, link here.

  °     °     °    °     °     °     °     °

Above: Mizrahi costumes for Beaux, choreographed by Mark Morris, 
San Francisco Ballet, 2012. 

Right: Blackbird w/Star of David belt 

Ostrich-feather hood, stretch wool jersey bodysuit

and pants, suede and brass belt, 

from fall 1991 collection.

“If crosses are everywhere, why not make the Star of David ubiquitous too? Just another thing?”

     °     °     °     °     °     °     

The Jewish Museum's retrospective encompasses three decades of Mizrahi's work. It runs through August 7, 2016. 

Originally posted 4/22/16

~oOo~